Finding Refuge in God's New Earth

MY WIFE, GRACIE, and I live with our three children on 35
acres of land near the mouth of the North Fork of the Skagit
River, an hour north of Seattle. This is home to New Earth
Refugea family-based hospitality and retreat center tied to
an ecumenical ministry among Latino immigrants in a nearby town.
Here we actively seek a sustainable life of solidarity with both
people and nature under assault.

Our journey to this land and ministry has been long and
perilous, but also rich and rewarding. In 1980-1981 we took a
trip to Central America that was both an awakening to the beauty
and dignity of the poor and a jarring introduction to the dark
side of U.S. imperialism. While studying Spanish in Guatemala,
Gracie and I learned from our Guatemalan teachers about the
numerous violent U.S. interventions against democratic movements
throughout Latin America. We witnessed the terror of a civil war
that claimed thousands of lives among Guatemala's indigenous
peoples. We felt called to somehow address the root causes of
poverty, and found support from a Christian community in Oregon
to work among peasants in Honduras.

We partnered with Jose Elias Sanchez, a Honduran development
maverick, who insisted that if we wanted to combat poverty at its
roots we had to teach farming. He recruited a sage Honduran
campesino, Fernando Andrade, to help us establish an experimental
farm and training center. Our goal was to teach sustainable
farming and preventive health care to help rural people stay on
their land and avoid the migration from country to city to North
America. Courses happened under mango trees in what we called the
Universidad del Campo (University of the Countryside). We founded
Tierra Nueva (New Earth) with longtime activists Larry and Joni
Geer-Sell and a cadre of campesino promoters, who continue to
provide technical and pastoral support to small farmers.

The university's "coursework" consisted of practical
alternatives to "slash and burn" that included
composting, mulching, and planting green manure crops instead of
burning; as well as digging contoured ditches, building
soil-conserving barriers, and planting to the contour instead of
farming steep land unprotected from tropical downpours. We
organized women's groups, trained health workers, and launched
campaigns to teach intensive vegetable gardening, hygiene,
nutrition, and herbal medicine.

Together we witnessed God's creating "a new heaven and a
new earth" (Isaiah 65) during a time when the United States
was building military bases, pressuring countries to recruit the
region's youth into the armed forces, conducting endless military
maneuvers, and launching wars against the people of El Salvador
and Nicaragua. We learned to read for the good news in the Bible
with people who often felt at the receiving end of God's big
stick. We learned to confront negative images of God by asking
questions that helped people identify a liberating God at the
heart of both the biblical stories and their broken lives.
Eventually we came to feel that we could best serve people as
pastoral agents, but we needed more training.

In 1989, we left Honduras and spent the next five years
studying theology, raising our children, and making regular trips
to Honduras. Our own conversion "from below" in
Honduras convinced us that mainstream churches and theological
academies need direct contact with marginalized people and nature
for their spiritual health and survival. We were also convinced
of the need for quality theological training to be offered to
people at the margins. In 1994 we launched Tierra Nueva del Norte
(New Earth of the North) in Burlington, Washingtonan
ecumenical ministry among migrant farm workers and other Latino
immigrants.

BURLINGTON IS IN the heart of the Skagit Valley, a fertile
agricultural valley that winds down from the North Cascades and
is drained by the scenic Skagit River. Like many farming
communities near cities, Skagit farmland is under assault. In
Burlington, acres of prime farmland have been paved over to host
nearly every major retailer imaginable. Cucumber, berry, and
apple farmers struggle to compete with producers in Sri Lanka,
Mexico, Chile, and China. Farmland is giving way to housing
developments, as Seattle commuters look further north for
affordable housing.

Thousands of farm workers from Mexico have been drawn to
Skagit County, where they work in fields, fish processing plants,
restaurants, and construction. Seasonal workers crowd into nine
migrant labor camps from June through October. Most of Skagit
County's immigrant workers are undocumented, placing them at
constant risk of deportation. Skagit County Jail is used as a
holding facility for immigrants arrested by local law enforcement
and detained by the Department of Homeland Security for
deportation.

When we first started Tierra Nueva del Norte, we moved into a
downscale residential neighborhood a few blocks from the Latino
center of Burlington. We visited immigrants in the strawberry and
cucumber fields and migrant labor camps of the Skagit Valley. I
was hired as part-time chaplain of Skagit County jail, where I
lead Spanish Bible studies twice a week. The jail serves as the
primary connection between Tierra Nueva and the most marginalized
Latinos. Many men ask me to visit their families, assist them
with immigration and other legal difficulties, or help them get
into drug or alcohol treatment programs.

The Tierra Nueva ministry grew rapidly and became increasingly
demanding. Migrants and ex-offenders came to our house day and
night, and we soon needed trained volunteers and a way for
cultivating future staff.

Our first seminars involved bringing farmers, farm workers,
and community members together to oppose INS raids. We then began
offering theological courses with titles like "Reading the
Bible With the Damned" and "Walking With People on the
Margins." We expanded our courses to include seminarians and
community members. The People's Seminary-Seminario del Pueblo was
formally launched in 2000 with help from a generous grant.

The People's Seminary is up and running as an ecumenical
learning center where people from the mainstream and the edges
meet for scripture study and theological reflection in
preparation for service, ministry, and social transformation.
Scholars and leaders from all over the world come to teach
herewith farm workers, ex-offenders, and people who serve
at the margins.

Tierra Nueva now includes eight full-time staff, 17 half-time
Honduran workers, and many volunteers who operate the Skagit
County jail ministry, a family support center, Camino de Emmaus-Road
to Emmaus (a bilingual faith community), The People's Seminary,
and the original community at Tierra Nueva in Honduras.

IN JULY 2002, Gracie and I, with our children, moved out of
Burlington to the New Earth Refuge. Now a healthy 20 minutes away
from Tierra Nueva and The People's Seminary (instead of three
blocks), we are coexisting with raccoons, beaver, river otter,
coyotes, deer, hawks, eagles, and numerous migratory bird
species. In addition we are raising eight sheep, a llama, a dog,
two rabbits, a rat, and a guinea pig.

Since this is our home, our first commitment is to learn to
live out spiritual practices that sustain us for life and
ministry as both individuals and a family. We are committed to
watchfulness, which includes daily prayer and scripture
readingmorning, noon, and night when possibleregular
walks, and Sunday worship. We also intend to offer hospitality to
friends, families, and people visiting Tierra Nueva or taking
courses at The People's Seminary. Seeing the beauty requires
cultivating watchfulness and prayerprecursors to
contemplation. I am convinced that we all need sanctuaries so we
cannot only survive but flourish in the struggle for life and
liberation.

Snow geese are flying low over our land todayfree over
this acreage from the danger of hunters. Last night's Bible study
in the jail was on Jesus as our "coyote"who
brings us into the Reign of God, into the Garden, the New Earth,
against the law, free of charge. There is good news to be
discovered and new life to be protected from the hunters, whether
they are law-enforcers, addictions, or other forces that oppress.
Living a sustainable life in these dark times demands constant
watching, praying, and delight. Without times of retreat and
fellowship, all people, including those seeking to serve in the
mainstream or at the margins will become endangered species. Yet
with or without a riverfront paradise, we affirm with the
psalmist: "God is a refuge for us" (Psalm 62:8).

Bob Ekblad was a Presbyterian pastor and executive director
of Tierra Nueva and The People's Seminary when this article
appeared. For more information see www.peoplesseminary.org or
call (360) 755-9182.

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